MONTREAL - The long lineup, annoying as it was, boded well for a real ramen experience. “Just like in Japan,” my friend from Nagoya commented as we stood squished in the entryway. When the crowd moved forward, it brought us closer to the vintage pachinko machine mounted on the far wall. This mechanized gambling game, in which steel balls work through a labyrinth, is sort of a hybrid slot machine and pinball machine. Although this one is no longer functional, it was easy to see how it could have been a real yen sucker, and a precursor to video lottery terminals. (Apparently, my friend told me, you can’t legally win money in Japan; instead you get a prize, and there’s usually a store next door where you can exchange it for cold, hard cash.)

Our expectations were high going in to Saka-ba! This ramen bar and isakaya was opened in February by Junichi Ikematsu, the Kyoto-born chef behind Laurier Avenue restaurant Juni, which so elegantly combines fine Japanese and French sensibilities. If many folks in the queue were happy to have his stamp on this menu (the kitchen here is overseen by Diana Panaram), many were just happy to have ramen in their neighbourhood. Fortunately, the turnover was quick, which might in part be attributed to the bar stools: the triangular cowboy-saddles don’t exactly encourage customers to linger — besides, lingering is not the ramen way. The rest of the decor is slick and slightly raucous, including red-stained counters, a rotary dial phone behind the bar, comic character murals and cute piggy staff T-shirts, as if we needed more proof that Japan is the land of cute T-shirts. In the on-view kitchen at the end of the room, overhead lamps cast a flattering light over the proceedings.

To start, we popped open a little jar of superb daikon kimchee, the fermented radish needle-sharp amid acid and chilies. The seaweed salad was fresh and feathery, with chewy splotches of green and pale green wakame sitting prettily on the plate. Then came curry beignets, which sounded kind of crazy and gleefully lived up to that: baseball doughnuts that contained a treasure of sweet and heartily spiced pork inside, served with some kind of figgy jam on the side. I completely enjoyed these.

While hearty bowls of ramen noodle soup are the main attraction, they weren’t the standouts of our meal. A revered dish in its home country, it has in recent years developed a cult following far afield — although it’s not that easy to get a really great example of it on these shores. Saka-ba! was full of promise, but somehow the broths were too clean, and didn’t quite deliver the slurping sloppy sloshfest of enjoyment we were anticipating. The one I liked best, and I really liked it, was the lobster and pork broth with miso. It had hints of the richness of a bisque, slow-cooked meatiness for staying power on the tongue and added depth from the miso. It was certainly the most complex of three. The shoyu, made with pork and soy, left a lingering film on the tongue, but left me wanting more — more salt among other things (and I rarely say that in restaurants), more flavour, more shoyu maybe, more fishy dashi. Most lacking was the chicken, pale, thin and as self-effacing as won ton soup bouillon. Toppings hit the mark: green onions, corn kernels, sprouts, bamboo shoots, just-cooked bright-yolked eggs. Char-sui, a Chinese-style pork that Japan adopted along with the springy yellow noodles, was tender and luscious with braised belly fat.

There was more to come for us, though, including a superlative yakitori set off by a mustardy slaw. Alternating chunks of chicken thigh and onions, grilled on a stick and sprinkled with sesame seeds, they tasted not just of the sweet-salty glaze they were brushed with but also of the poultry itself — organic, double happiness. (When you can actually taste chicken meat, you realize how often you don’t really taste it, which is sort of scary.)

The gyoza, dumplings of near-translucent dough that showed off flecks of green from the minced pork and cabbage filling, were ultra-fresh and fried on one side. It’s true that I haven’t met much Japanese fried chicken that I didn’t like, but Saka-ba!’s karaage was a moist and nibbly pleasure, upped with mayo and fish roe dip on the side.

Desserts also set it apart in the local isakaya scene. A cleverly repatriated tiramisu consisted of mochi powdered with chocolate and oozing adzuki bean paste and cream. Batonettes of cheesecake (dense, rather than the featherweight Japanese type), served with ginger ice cream, were made unfathomably delicious with a topping of ultra-aromatic bittersweet sunny yuzu marmalade.

Clearly, there are deft hands at work at Saka-ba! — maybe I’d expected the ramen to be transformative (or transportative, as in back to Tokyo), but I left wishing it had been, well, dirtier somehow.

Still, the moments of Juni-level savvy and style throughout the meal were appreciated, and with the liquor licence in place, and the menu continuing to evolve, those lineups will only get longer.

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